Part 49 (1/2)
FOOTNOTES:
[538] _Command_.--Mountcashel gave the word ”right face;” it was repeated ”right about face.” Colonel Hamilton and Captain Lavallin were tried in Dublin by court-martial for the mistake, and the latter was shot.
[539] _Arrived_.--The journals of two officers of the Williamite army have been published in the _Ulster Arch. Jour_., and furnish some interesting details of the subsequent campaign. One of the writers is called Bonnivert, and was probably a French refugee; the other was Dr.
Davis, a Protestant clergyman, who obtained a captaincy in William's army, and seemed to enjoy preaching and fighting with equal zest.
[540] _Sick_.--Harris' _Life of King William_, p. 254, 1719. Macaulay's account of the social state of the camp, where there were so many divines preaching, is a proof that their ministrations were not very successful, and that the lower order of Irish were not at all below the English of the same cla.s.s in education or refinement. ”The moans of the sick were drowned by the blasphemy and ribaldry of their companions.
Sometimes, seated on the body of a wretch who had died in the morning, might be seen a wretch destined to die before night, cursing, singing loose songs, and swallowing usquebaugh to the health of the devil. When the corpses were taken away to be buried, the survivors grumbled. A dead man, they said, was a good screen and a good stool. Why, when there was so abundant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, were people to be exposed to the cold air, and forced to crouch on the moist ground?”--Macaulay's _History of England_, People's Ed. part viii. p.
88.
[541] _Eminence_.--Journal of Captain Davis, published in the _Ulster Archaeological Journal_, vol. iv.
[542] _Twenty thousand_.--Captain Davis' Journal.
[543] _Shoulder_.--Davis' Journal The coat was exhibited at the meeting of the British a.s.sociation in Belfast, in 1852. It had descended as an heirloom through Colonel Wetherall, William's aide-de-camp, who took it off him after the accident.
[544] _Career_.--_History of the King's Inns_, p. 239.
[545] _Been.--Life of William III_. p. 327.
[546] _Charge_.--See the _Green Book_, p. 231, for some curious stories about this engagement, and for a detailed account of St. Ruth's death.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
Formation of the Irish Brigade--Violation of the Treaty of Limerick--Enactment of the Penal Laws--Restrictions on Trade--The Embargo Laws--The Sacramental Test introduced--The Palatines--The Irish forbidden to enlist in the Army--Dean Swift and the Drapier's Letters--Attempts to form a Catholic a.s.sociation--Irish Emigrants defeat the English in France, Spain, and America--The Whiteboys--An Account of the Cause of these Outrages, by an English Tourist--Mr. Young's Remedy for Irish Disaffection--The Peculiar Position and Difficulties of Irish Priests--The Judicial Murder of Father Nicholas Sheehy--Grattan's Demand for Irish Independence--The Volunteers--A Glimpse of Freedom.
[A.D. 1691-1783.]
St. John's Gate and the Irish outworks were surrendered to the English; the English town was left for the Irish troops to occupy until their departure for France. The men were to have their choice whether they would serve under William III. or under the French. A few days after they were mustered on the Clare side of the Shannon, to declare which alternative they preferred. An Ulster battalion, and a few men in each regiment, in all about 1,000, entered the service of Government; 2,000 received pa.s.ses to return home; 11,000, with all the cavalry, volunteered for France, and embarked for that country in different detachments, under their respective officers. They were warmly received in the land of their adoption; and all Irish Catholics to France were granted the privileges of French citizens, without the formality of naturalization. And thus was formed the famous ”Irish Brigade,” which has become a household word for bravery and the glory of the Irish nation.
The Treaty, as I have said, was signed on the 3rd of October, 1691. The preamble states that the contracting parties were Sir Charles Porter and Thomas Coningsby, Lords Justices, with the Baron de Ginkell as Commander-in-Chief, on the part of William and Mary; Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, Viscount Galmoy, Colonel Purcell, Colonel Cusack, Sir J. Butler, Colonel Dillon, and Colonel Brown, on the part of the Irish nation. The articles were fifty-two in number. They guaranteed to the Catholics (1) the free exercise of their religion; (2) the privilege of sitting in Parliament; (3) freedom of trade; (4) the safety of the estates of those who had taken up arms for King James; (5) a general amnesty; (6) all the honours of war to the troops, and a free choice for their future destination. The articles run to considerable length, and cannot, therefore, be inserted here; but they may be seen _in extenso_ in MacGeoghegan's _History of Ireland_, and several other works. So little doubt had the Irish that this Treaty would be solemnly observed, that when the accidental omission of two lines was discovered in the clean copy, they refused to carry out the arrangements until those lines had been inserted. The Treaty was confirmed by William and Mary, who pledged ”the honour of England” that it should be kept inviolably, saying: ”We do, for us, our heirs and successors, as far as in us lies, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause, matter, and thing therein contained.” Two days after the signing of the Treaty, a French fleet arrived in the Shannon, with 3,000 soldiers, 200 officers, and 10,000 stand of arms. Sarsfield was strongly urged to break faith with the English; but he n.o.bly rejected the temptation. How little did he foresee how cruelly that nation would break faith with him!
Two months had scarcely elapsed after the departure of the Irish troops, when an English historian was obliged to write thus of the open violation of the articles: ”The justices of the peace, sheriffs, and other magistrates, presuming on their power in the country, dispossessed several of their Majesties' Catholic subjects, not only of their goods and chattels, but also of their lands and tenements, to the great reproach of their Majesties' Government.”[547] These complaints were so general, that the Lords Justices were at last obliged to issue a proclamation on the subject (November 19, 1691), in which they state that they had ”received complaints from all parts of Ireland of the ill-treatment of the Irish who had submitted; and that they [the Irish]
were so extremely terrified with apprehensions of the continuance of that usage, that some of those who had quitted the Irish army and went home, with the resolution not to go to France, were then come back again, and pressed earnestly to go thither, rather than stay in Ireland, where, contrary to the public faith, as well as law and justice, they were robbed in their persons and abused in their substance.” Let it be remembered that this was an official doc.u.ment, and that it emanated from the last persons who were likely to listen to such complaints, or relieve them if they could possibly have been denied.
The men who had hoped for confiscations that they might share the plunder, now began to clamour loudly. It was necessary to get up a popular cry against Papists, as the surest means of attaining their end.
Individuals who had as little personal hatred to the Pope as they had to the Grand Turk, and as little real knowledge of the Catholic Faith as of Mahometanism, uttered wild cries of ”No Popery!” and ”No Surrender!”
William, whose morals, if not his professions, proclaimed that he was not troubled with any strong religious convictions, was obliged to yield to the faction who had set him on the throne. Probably, he yielded willingly; and was thus able, in some measure, to make a pretence of doing under pressure what he really wished to do of his own will.
On the 28th of October, 1692, the Parliament in Dublin rejected a Bill which had been sent from England, containing restrictions on certain duties, solely to proclaim their independence. A few days after they were taught a lesson of obedience. Lord Sidney came down to the House unexpectedly, and prorogued Parliament, with a severe rebuke, ordering the Clerk to enter his protest against the proceedings of the Commons on the journals of the House of Lords. The hopes of the English were raised, and the Parliament brought forward the subject of the Limerick articles, with torrents of complaints against the Irish in general, and the Irish Catholics in particular. William received their remonstrance coolly, and the matter was allowed to rest for a time. In 1695 Lord Capel was appointed Viceroy. He at once summoned a Parliament, which sat for several sessions, and in which some of the penal laws against Catholics were enacted. As I believe the generality even of educated persons, both in England and Ireland, are entirely ignorant of what these laws really were, I shall give a brief account of their enactments, premising first, that seven lay peers and seven Protestant bishops had the honorable humanity to sign a protest against them.
(1) The Catholic peers were deprived of their right to sit in Parliament. (2) Catholic gentlemen were forbidden to be elected as members of Parliament. (3) It denied all Catholics the liberty of voting, and it excluded them from all offices of trust, and indeed from _all remunerative_ employment, however insignificant.[548] (4) They were fined 60 a-month for absence from the Protestant form of wors.h.i.+p. (5) They were forbidden to travel five miles from their houses, to keep arms, to maintain suits at law, or to be guardians or executors. (6) Any four justices of the peace could, without further trial, banish any man for life if he refused to attend the Protestant service. (7) Any two justices of the peace could call any man over sixteen before them, and if he refused to abjure the Catholic religion, they could bestow his property on the next of kin. (8) No Catholic could employ a Catholic schoolmaster to educate his children; and if he sent his child abroad for education, he was subject to a fine of 100, and the child could not inherit any property either in England or Ireland. (9) Any Catholic priest who came to the country should be hanged. (10) Any Protestant suspecting any other Protestant of holding property[549] in trust for any Catholic, might file a bill against the suspected trustee, and take the estate or property from him. (11) Any Protestant seeing a Catholic tenant-at-will on a farm, which, in his opinion, yielded one-third more than the yearly rent, might enter on that farm, and, by simply swearing to the fact, take possession. (12) Any Protestant might take away the horse of a Catholic, no matter how valuable, by simply paying him 5.
(13) Horses and wagons belonging to Catholics, were in all cases to be seized for the use of the militia. (14) Any Catholic gentleman's child who became a Protestant, could at once take possession of his father's property.
I have only enumerated some of the enactments of this code, and I believe there are few persons who will not be shocked at their atrocity.
Even if the rights of Catholics had not been secured to them by the Treaty of Limerick, they had the rights of men; and whatever excuse, on the ground of hatred of Popery as a religion, may be offered for depriving men of liberty of conscience, and of a share in the government of their country, there can be no excuse for the gross injustice of defrauding them of their property, and placing life and estate at the mercy of every ruffian who had an interest in depriving them of either or of both. Although the seventeenth century has not yet been included in the dark ages, it is possible that posterity, reading these enactments, may reverse present opinion on this subject.
But though the Parliament which sat in Dublin, and was misnamed Irish, was quite willing to put down Popery and to take the property of Catholics, it was not so willing to submit to English rule in other matters. In 1698 Mr. Molyneux, one of the members for the University of Dublin, published a work, ent.i.tled _The Case of Irelands being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, stated_. But Mr. Molyneux's book was condemned by the English Parliament; and after a faint show of resistance, the Irish members succ.u.mbed. The next attention which the English Houses paid to this country, was to suppress the woollen trade.